It has taken Alan Jackson a few years to release a new album. Where Have You Gone, the Hall of Famer’s first album in six years, was delayed for a multitude of personal reasons – he lost his mother (affectionately called “Mama Ruth”) in 2017; and just a year later (2018), his son-in-law, Ben Selecman who was married to his eldest daughter Mattie, tragically died after a fall. For a while, he says, he didn’t even feel like making music, but once he did, then the global pandemic hit.

“I think we were pretty much on track to do an album like we typically have every couple of years or two or three years and just had some little rough spots in my life and personal things that slowed us down and set me back that we had to get through, my family and myself. And for several years there, I really didn’t feel like writing at all and recording, and it took a while to get back in gear,” says Alan. “And last spring, I think it was, I was ready, and we booked studio time and got ready to go in and I started thinking about writing songs again. And then the virus thing hit and everything kind of came to a halt and we dealt with that all last year.”

The Newnan, Georgia native added “And then later in the summer, I called Keith Stegall, my producer, and said ‘hey man, I’m tired of waiting on this thing. Let’s just do it.’ So, we just decided to go ahead and get everybody in the studio whether they had to wear a mask or a helmet or whatever they had to wear and get in there and cut this thing. (laughs)”

Alan wrote 15 of the 21 songs on the new album Where Have You Gone, which is available on Friday (May 14th).